She paused, but it was unthinkable to interrupt at this point, even though this was clearly the young man Mother had talked about: the young man who had not been allowed to marry Alice. Had they clung together and sobbed, like people in films or on TV did? Had they vowed that one day they would find a way to be together? But it did not seem as if they ever had, because Alice lived on her own out here.
Alice said, ‘The footman took his cloak and he was about to go into the ballroom with his friends. But then he turned and looked up the stairs. Miss Nina was still only halfway down, and at first I thought he was looking at her.’
‘But he wasn’t, was he? He was looking at you?’
The smile slid out, slightly mischievous. ‘Yes. He was looking at me.’
It was impossible to explain – even to this odd, extraordinarily intuitive child who had become so very dear – how one had felt in that moment, or to describe the mingled emotions of excitement and soaring joy and triumph, because the unknown young man had not even seemed to see the rich, beautiful Nina; he had looked straight at the little servant-girl, the drab-haired, drab-garbed little sparrow who had been standing quietly and rather humbly in the shadows. Alice had been humble in those days, because she had been trained to be.
But the young man with the eyes the colour of the topaz necklace Miss Nina had tossed Alice’s way (‘I don’t care for it any more, Alice – you may have it’) had hardly seemed aware of Nina.
Alice leaned back in her chair, her mind going back over the years to that astonishing night. ‘He was a famous musician, that young man – although I had never heard of him. He had been intended as Miss Nina’s husband – I didn’t know that, either – but I found out later that the engagement was to have been announced that very night. That was how people did things in those days, and in those circles. After supper, Miss Nina’s papa would have made the announcement, and everyone would have applauded, and champagne would have been served for the guests to drink to the couple’s future happiness.’
But none of it had happened, because the young man with topaz eyes had left the ballroom within ten minutes of arriving; he had ignored the claims of his betrothed-to-be and his hosts, and had walked into the servants’ hall as bold and as arrogant as a buccaneer. He had found Alice, who fortunately had been on her own, and asked her to come out to supper with him at one of the little coffee places in the middle of Vienna. Yes, he meant tonight, in fact he meant now. He could not bear to spend his evening pretending – he had pretended for too long. And he could not be bothered with being conventional, he said, especially now that he had seen Alice.
He was like no one Alice had ever encountered in her life, and she had gone with him, not bothering to seek permission, simply pulling on her warm woollen cloak and walking out of the house through the little garden door.
They had gone to a restaurant near to St Stephen’s Cathedral called the Three Hussars. To Alice it seemed very grand, and full of expensively dressed ladies and gentlemen. She had no idea what she had eaten, because very soon the young man had taken her to his rooms which were in a tall old house in the ancient part of the city, the part that was somehow sinister and where the streets seemed almost to sing with their own dark past, and where anything – anything! – might happen to one…
Anything might happen…